Tuesday, 21 April 2015

23 April 2015

The words “We
will remember them. Lest we forget,” will be intoned in ceremonies across New
Zealand, Australia, and the Gallipoli peninsula this weekend, as people of many
ages and backgrounds commemorate the bravery of those who took part in the
ill-fated landings a century ago. And so they should. Those events at ANZAC
Cove that morning, now shrouded in almost as much legend as reality, shaped the
characters of at least two nations, and established the bond between Australia
and New Zealand that endures today.

In New Zealand,
at least, ANZAC Day has become the closest thing we have to a genuine national
day, where we pay tribute to and celebrate the characteristics and values we
regard as intrinsic to being a New Zealander today. (Please stop this incessant
reference to us as Kiwis – I for one do not like being compared to a dumb,
flightless bird!)

But what about
the relationship with Australia? There is certainly the quant siblingrivalry referred to de rigueur in almost
every speech on the subject, although that is mainly on the sports field. We
speak a marginally better form of English than they do, although that
distinction seems to be receding as our diction is increasingly reduced to
grunts and slovenly nasal twangs, more redolent of the other side of the
Tasman. We have broadly the same things in our shops, and like visiting each
other. Oh, and Australian Prime Ministers keep referring to us as “family”. But
beyond that superficiality, the relationship is more akin to that of the distant
cousin, rather than the close sibling we like to portray it as.

This is not
altogether surprising. Since Seddon properly rejected the invitation for New
Zealand to join the Commonwealth of Australia at the time of Federation in 1901
we have, in our parlance, paddled our own wakas. Occasionally, there have been
attempts to invigorate the relationship, from the Canberra Pact in 1944,
through to the New Zealand Australia Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) of 1967, and
most notably the Closer Economic Relations (CER) agreement of 1983, but benign
neglect has been the more general characteristic. And in such interactions as
occur, the presumption is always of New Zealand being not quite on a par with
New South Wales, rather than as an equal sovereign nation. (The nadir most
surely – aside from the infamous underarm incident – must have been the Keating
Government’s decision via a curt late night fax in the early 1990s to terminate
consideration of a single aviation market.)

While Australia
and New Zealand are clearly two different and distinct countries, there are
arguably no more similar peoples on earth. Despite all the rivalries, we
genuinely like each other too. And as Gallipoli and so many other campaigns
demonstrate, we have been side by side on so many occasions. The sentiments we
express about our closeness are genuine, even if the reality is a little less
than that.

So, as we invoke
the ANZAC spirit this weekend and promise afresh never to forget the sacrifices
of an earlier generation that crisp April morning a century ago, let us mark
the occasion by breathing fresh life into the modern Australia New Zealand
relationship. As two equal sovereign states, let us honour our forebears by
making our relationship the closest of any two nations on earth. A practical starting
point would be to allow our respective citizens free movement across our
borders, without the need for a passport, as is increasingly the case in
Europe.

The spectacular
memorial gift to grace Wellington’s Pukeahu park is one thing – but, Mr Abbott,
a move on passports would be a much more enduring recognition of the bond we
say we forged at Gallipoli.